Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) for Azure, on-premises, and multicloud (Amazon AWS and Google GCP) resources.
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SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
Score 7.8 out of 10
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SolarWinds LEM is security information and event management (SIEM) software.
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Splunk Enterprise
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Splunk is software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated big data, via a web-style interface. It captures, indexes and correlates real-time data in a searchable repository from which it can generate graphs, reports, alerts, dashboards and visualizations.
We use Splunk to also collect Syslog data across our enterprise. However, it is quite different in the correlation process. Splunk is less user-friendly and requires advanced-level training to manage. Solarwinds SEM is a lot easier to manage and set-up.
SEM is much better value proposition due to being priced by node and not by size of the event database. It's also much easier to configure that Splunk and needs much less infrastructure to run. Out of the box SEM beats Splunk on functionality. We looked at many products and …
The compare well against the others - the pricing models for all but Splunk (free version) are based on EPS/TB consumed... the problem they pose is guesstimating the price tag per month. SolarWinds Security Event Manager gets around that.
It came down to price on this one. SolarWinds gave us a great break on
it. For the features that we were looking for, SolarWinds is a great
value for our dollar. As far as features go, we were looking for some
Splunk was a pretty good product but the licensing structure needed a lot of work. They changed the structure three times that I am aware and I still had problems understanding LogRhythm had a lot of issues correlating users to IP addresses, the mappings were frequently wrong …
We found that SolarWinds performed poorly when the Architecture included many large data centers spread across the globe. When evaluating the SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) solution we quickly realized that we needed a distributed architecture with log aggregation to …
Solarwinds LEM lacks a lot of the features and power of their competitors. It also appears, at least at the outside of the competitors, that it is less user friendly and out of the box ready. We ended up with the Solarwinds solution because of budgetary constraints and …
Microsoft is well-suited with its definitive cloud, and I also like its Microsoft Intune ID. The conditional policies are great with that, and they're really good and well situated, so you can't beat them at that conditional policy level. Less appropriate, as I said, some of these low-hanging fruit features, like being good in phishing campaigns, and then I feel like maybe doing better at their seam products. So we'll see how that goes.
Optimal for SolarWinds Security Event Manager needs for smaller companies - it is a very cool product but has some limitations around EPS (which gets chewed up quickly if you're doing it the right way & adding servers/storage/FW & other network devices)... Also pricing model is GREAT (not consumption-based, which is the greatest grift the SIEM industry has created).
It's well suited for what I do, which is network security operations. And that's for anything from troubleshooting incidents, troubleshooting performance, troubleshooting for the purpose of a compliance and auditing. It's not best suited for users who are new in terms of they're new to the product and they have expectations that probably Splunk cannot meet.
It does a great job of notifying us when accounts have been locked out. We can then find out the device on the network where the login attempt occurred.
Searching for incidents is now a lot faster with the implementation of the HTML 5 interface.
Granular permissions and role-based access management could improve security. This would enable organizations to control who has access to and can set specific features.
While it offers integration with various Microsoft services, expanding support for third-party cloud platforms and applications would enhance its versatility. Many organizations use multiple cloud providers, and broader compatibility would be advantageous.
The cost structure could be more transparent, especially for larger organizations with extensive cloud resources. Clearer cost breakdowns and predictions would help organizations budget more effectively.
All SolarWinds product suffer from slow response times in management portals. SolarWinds SEM is no exception. While it is much preferred over a "thick client" there is much room for improvement in speed.
If you use the email alert features with SolarWinds make sure to prepare you staff and team for the large amount of emails they could receive. Make sure to reduce the number of alerts so your team does not ignore the alerts.
It is a great product that integrates nicely when running an Azure platform and even multi-cloud environment. Not looking for point-solutions but a suite that answers most requirements. It is very comfortable being able to use KQL, workbooks and automation that is native to the azure platform
It is pretty likely that we will renew SEM when the time comes up. It is easy to use and maintain so there isn't much of a need to replace this product. It is also a pretty fair price for the capabilities provided by the SEM
We are using Splunk extensively in our projects and we have recently upgraded to Splunk version 6.0 which is quite efficient and giving expected results. We keep track of updates and new features Splunk introduces periodically and try to introduce those features in our day to day activities for improvement in our reporting system and other tasks.
My visibility is limited because I'm only doing very small pieces of what the overall org does. And also, we have limitations on what we're allowed to use. It's not like we get a new product as users or leadership level users, and everything is on, and we can just do whatever we want. We're very restricted in what we can use any tooling within the org because of the different levels of regulatory constraints we have, because of just the nature of who we are inherently. So that's why. I don't think it's necessarily the product. I think it's more or less of what we're able to do with the product.
If you are familiar with SolarWinds then you can use this product it's as easy as that. If you have never used a SolarWinds product then it will take a minute to get how they do reports and make dashboards but that being said the tool is great and can make things very easy once you get a feel for how it works and get everything setup how you like it.
You can literally throw in a single word into Splunk and it will pull back all instances of that word across all of your logs for the time span you select (provided you have permission to see that data). We have several users who have taken a few of the free courses from Splunk that are able to pull data out of it everyday with little help at all.
The quality of support can vary depending on whom you end up speaking with. I was fortunate enough to work with a support representative who was very familiar with the product. He had even authored some of the support documentation on the website. On the flip side, I had two other experiences where I was simply directed to online training material.
Splunk maintains a well resourced support system that has been consistent since we purchased the product. They help out in a timely manner and provide expert level information as needed. We typically open cases online and communicate when possible via e-mail and are able to resolve most issues with that method.
The online course was simple clear and described the main capabilities of the solution. There is also an initial module that can be done for free so anyone can familiarize themselves with the functionality of this solution. On the other hand, however, there could be more free online courses. Maybe even with a certificate, this would broaden the group of people who are familiar with the platform while increasing familiarity with the solution itself.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is definitely the choice with the latest market trend and attacks that are currently happening. Microsoft has been able to safe guard a lot after the recent serious attacks happening globally in the digital world. There is a trust in this software and with the latest updates and machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud should be the choice.
Fortianalzyer can only do logs from FortiGate so usefulness is limited. Elasticsearch was a lot slower than Solarwinds and the filters were a lot harder to set up and use. The connectors for SEM were far more stable.
I didn't get to fully evaluate Logstash as our corporation was already using Logstash, but both seemed like viable solutions to the problem that we were having. I wanted to evaluate Logstash some more, both did seem like they would work for the business needs that we had, we went with splunk as many teams were already using it.
It simplifies security management and saves time. I'm not sure, but I'm very confident it saved me a couple of paychecks by centralizing the data I need to secure the cloud environment.
I also utilize the inventory overview to monitor my team's activities and verify they are following internal regulations, as well as cost overruns.
The recommendations can be utilized as a valuable instructional tool. I have the team explain why they are receiving them, why they are not following them, and what they are doing differently.
For the price, it produced a decent value. It did a lot of the easy stuff well. I can't give any specific data given the objective of the product was to monitor very basic events in the environment.
I don't have any numbers to share but Splunk has positively served as a 24/7 monitoring tool that has saved hours of work by self-detecting, saving statistics and alerting problems in the system or from external interfaces as soon as they happen.
Splunk dashboards does a solid job in collecting, analyzing data and creating reports that contain an entire day's activity and then automatically sent out to the business.
Splunk is very easy to learn and very useful to any program or business application.
